As a young company, we are still finding our identity. However, there are things that we refuse to compromise.
You are the company. You deserve to know about everything about the company, and we have the responsibility to keep you informed. We want to create a culture of openness and transparency where every single team member feels comfortable to bring up any issue at all for discussion, and to ask any question they have on their mind.
Healthcare is driven by largely incumbents that care little about the users and their customers given the entrenched nature of healthcare. Innovating to ensure our customers and our users are happy will ensure we create an ever-lasting innovative company. This means experimenting, accepting failures that can happen, and continue to be innovative and seek insights. Customer delight, rare as it is, is something to cherish as this will result in continuously positive feedback (referrals to other users, other customers) which in healthcare continue to be a large driver given the small tight-knit community. Deeply understand our customers, their workflow, and what they struggle with to help come up with innovative means of improving their lives. Do not underestimate the power of pleasing the customer.
Early in a start-up’s life, every employee is an executive. Everyone here has been chosen because they have the potential to be the CEO of their own domain, and will be treated as such. You will be given great autonomy to define your own role and tasks, but with this comes responsibility. Be self motivated to push the boundaries and to take the initiative to do more for the company without being asked, and everyone will support you in your endeavours. However, in the early growth phase, a small team cannot spend time policing each other so that the job is being done on time and being done well. When we promise to do something, we are held to our words.
Failure
Shit happens, no matter how hard you work. When shit happens, let’s learn from it if it’s possible. Post mortems is a must to ensure the learning translates into errors not occuring again for the same type of reason.
Success
When things go well, we need to all pat ourselves on the back. But not too long of a celebration, because everyday is a battle and we need to keep the eye on the ball. Reward ourselves of accomplishments, celebrate success, and then tackle additional challenges.
Deeply respect one another, and try to understand their perspective. This does not mean tolerate your colleagues to submit deliverables late frequently because of things in their life. But rather, be there for them, comfort them if they are dealing with issues, and support them as a friend. Professionally, be supportive, but continue treat the deliverable timelines as critical similar to how the company milestones are treated by our investors and customers. They have very little sympathy when our company are suffering, they only care about the deliverables.
Prioritize the hours you put into the company into the most important aspect of the companies, and utilize tools and strategies to make the most impact. Do not purely sink into time, but take a step back and think whether the hours spent is worth it.